I think every person on the no-fly list should be put on an airplane in the middle of the desert with enough fuel to land safely but not enough to enter a major city. If the plane doesn't crash, you're taken off the list.

Seriously, these things aren't designed to make some kind of alarm when they are not plugged in? And the TSA doesn't have some periodic check-like scanning a piece of metal every 5 minutes, to be sure these things are working?

Quality 101.

I shutter to think about how well they maintain and operate the more sophisticated (and potentially harmful) scanners.

I'm having a hard time believing this. I've never worked a metal detector, and never paid much attention going through one... but does it sit dormant, with no lights or activity when people pass through successfully.

I'd think there was at least a green light for "pass" and a red for "fail".

Or, at the very, very least... a green light for "on"... like every electronic device I own.

I'm going to guess you're all going to call me a racist when I point out the TSA hired a screener named ABDUL to protect us against supposed Muslim terrorists and paranoid when I point out that it's a brilliant way for Al Q to get a bunch of say, BOXCUTTERS on board.

acanuck:I'm going to guess you're all going to call me a racist when I point out the TSA hired a screener named ABDUL to protect us against supposed Muslim terrorists and paranoid when I point out that it's a brilliant way for Al Q to get a bunch of say, BOXCUTTERS on board.

Genius.

/holy fark are we retarded as a nation

If only they'd do some kind of background checks on people. Instead of let people just walk off the street and get handed a uniform. Too bad you aren't in charge of things over there. You'd have picked up on the fact that the brown guy was probably a terrorist pretty quick.

GAT_00:I'm pretty sure you'd feel differently if someone had gotten on board to hijack and they hadn't pulled people back because people would think it was stupid.

It's like everyone has just lost all ability to think anything other than TSA = bad. I'm pretty sure TSA could stop a concerted hijacking effort at this point and nobody would give them credit for it.

9/11 only worked because both passengers and pilots were trained to do whatever a hijacker wanted. In the wake of 9/11 cockpit doors were reinforced and pilots know not to open them for hijackers. Additionally, passengers no longer believe that the best thing is to sit quietly in the event of a hijacking. Any plane in the sky has dozens or even hundreds of males between about 16-50 who have hero fantasies about taking out a hijacker. If someone tried to pull a 9/11 type attack today it wouldn't work, even if they got all the same weapons through security.

99.99% of what the TSA does is security theater. A metal detector for people (so people can't bring on a gun) and a scanner for luggage (so you can't bring on a bomb) is all the TSA actually needs to do. Everything else is a waste of time, money, and goodwill.

Guidette Frankentits:I think every person on the no-fly list should be put on an airplane in the middle of the desert with enough fuel to land safely but not enough to enter a major city. If the plane doesn't crash crashes, you're taken off the list.

Thoguh:Any plane in the sky has dozens or even hundreds of males between about 16-50 who have hero fantasies about taking out a hijacker. If someone tried to pull a 9/11 type attack today it wouldn't work, even if they got all the same weapons through security.

It's far more likely some group will simply blow up a plane after bribing one of those fine, upstanding TSA employees to smuggle their "drugs" through security.

acanuck:I'm going to guess you're all going to call me a racist when I point out the TSA hired a screener named ABDUL to protect us against supposed Muslim terrorists and paranoid when I point out that it's a brilliant way for Al Q to get a bunch of say, BOXCUTTERS on board.

Why wouldn't this equipment be hardwired. I see no reason why this would need an exposed plug that someone could access and disable even on accident. Or are they saying unplugged as a blanket term for turned off.

GAT_00:It's like everyone has just lost all ability to think anything other than TSA = bad. I'm pretty sure TSA could stop a concerted hijacking effort at this point and nobody would give them credit for it.

We also think TSA = thieves.

And no, I don't think the TSA could stop a 4-year-old from hi-jacking a toy plane in a day care. I do think they would be qualified to grope the children and steal the teacher's wallet.

A different story I read screamed that there were passengers who might have already gotten on planes and made it out of the airport who weren't properly screened. OMG!

Thing is, TSA wonk unplugs metal detector. Accomplice goes through the detector with various contraband. When they start pulling planes back to the terminal and evacuating everybody out to be re-scanned, just stash the bads somewhere inside the security zone and voila'.

BunkyBrewman:The article never did state how long the metal detector was unplugged. Only two planes full of passengers? Sure there were.

Only two planes on the runway when they discovered the problem. There were probably some planes that already took off and certainly several sitting at the gate being loaded/unloaded/cleaned when the discovery happened. Makes sense considering it's just one terminal at JFK where all the small terminals have separate security lines.

Did they catch any dangerous weapons on the re-screening? Someone planning trouble would have had no way to know they had an opportunity. Why not accept that the odds of anything happening because one lane failed to do part of the screening for part of the day are really, really low and not cause a massive inconvenience?

GAT_00:I'm pretty sure you'd feel differently if someone had gotten on board to hijack and they hadn't pulled people back because people would think it was stupid.

It's like everyone has just lost all ability to think anything other than TSA = bad. I'm pretty sure TSA could stop a concerted hijacking effort at this point and nobody would give them credit for it.

Before 9/11, pilots were trained and passengers were told to do whatever they said, because nearly all plane hijackings were done to extort money and demand freedom/protection/asylum. No one had hijacked a plane to sue as a missile to destroy something.

After 9/11, any hijackers who try will their asses kicked by the passengers. There's no way another 9/11 will happen again. The TSA hasn't prevented anything, they're security theater that wastes money and time with employees who can't even do their job right half the time. Strip-searching six-year-olds and causing great physical pain to paraplegics is not how you ensure safety.